One America Works, a nonprofit that helps high-growth companies find the right cities for expansion, received a $1 million grant over two years from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

A venture capitalist is working with a city passed over for Amazon's HQ2 to use its secretive proposal to bring other tech companies to roost. Source: Business Insider: Pittsburgh Adds Tech Jobs Amazon Proposal

Silicon Valley is facing an exodus of young employees. Here's why one tech investor is betting on Pittsburgh to take up the mantle. Source: Business Insider: Is Pittsburgh Tech Scene the Next Silicon Valley

Alternative lending provider Affirm is the latest tech company to look to Pittsburgh for talent, announcing plans to open an office in the Rust Belt city.... Source:...

For those who have not recently driven down the Ohio Turnpike, images of abandoned steel mills and shuttered factories may come to mind. But the view from the car window today looks far different... Source:...

Between 1940 and 1980 the wage gap between poorer U.S. cities and richer ones was shrinking at an annual rate of roughly 1.4%. After 1980, however, there was no further regional conver- gence overall. This paper quantifies the contributions of skill-biased technical...

"The U.S. Cluster Mapping Project is used by governments, economic developers, and businesses to understand and shape the competitive landscape for a wide range of industries.  These data are being put in the hands of local officials, who are using the information to...

CNN’s Ron Brownstein posted a strong comment this morning on the spatial politics of economic power, using data from Brookings on the nation’s uneven growth map. Brownstein doubts that the current … Source: Geographic gaps are widening while U.S. economic growth...

Harvard Business School (HBS) launched the U.S. Com- petitiveness Project in 2011 as a multi-year, fact-based effort to understand the disappointing performance of the American economy, its causes, and the steps needed by business and government to restore economic...

While the median household income has seen an increase for the second consecutive year, the trend does not hold uniformly around the country. In five maps, see the progress made, but mostly lost, in urban areas. Source: Five maps show progress made, but mostly lost,...

A road map for creating shared value Source: Profitable Ways to Tackle Poverty and Inequality

When customer service software company Zendesk decided to open a U.S. office outside its San Francisco headquarters, VP of public policy Tiffany Apczynski said the company had one major concern: wh… Source: How Zendesk, Switch, and Zillow look for talent outside...

Venture capitalists went on a Midwest tour recently that was described by The New York Times as a “Rust Belt safari.” Lost in the discussion were the actual Midwestern entrepreneurs. Source: Silicon Valley Has Noticed the Heartland. What Now? - CityLab

TurnKey Vacation Rentals, one of the nation’s largest vacation rental management companies, recently announced it has received $31 million in funding. The Austin-based startup received the funding from Adam Street Partners which led the Series D round along with...

Next Frontier Capital announced today that it has raised a $38 million fund to deploy more capital to Montana startups. The fund is the Bozeman, Montana-based firm’s second. Founder and gener… Source: Next Frontier Capital raises $38 million fund to deploy more...

The Rise of the Rest seed fund’s first round of startup investments cover eight states that are usually overlooked by tech investors, including Kentucky, South Carolina and Ohio. The $150 million f… Source: The Rise of the Rest seed fund announces its first group of...

About a dozen venture capitalists recently took a bus tour through the Midwest, and a funny thing happened: They caught the heartland bug. Source: Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley